It Begins … nearly. Brighton9 Trial Starts Tomorrow

Starting tomorrow – and continuing for the next two weeks – nine Brighton Uncut activists will start the day with a coffee and a frisking at Brighton Magistrates Court.

The whole affair just reeks of public interest.

Top Shop claim a mannequin got damaged and the police and the CPS have fallen over each other to ensure the heinous act of super-gluing yourself to a window is allocated court time which truly reflects the severity of the crime.

You’d imagine that paying for two weeks of court staff, prosecution and defense barristers and solicitor’s aids is going to be slightly more costly than the £3,700 Top Shop claim they paid for fixing their broken mannequin.

Well that’s not really fair… the mannequin wasn’t fixed but replaced. In fact they all were… you can’t have mannequins that don’t match! This is a global brand for goodness sakes…

So. The £1bn Arcadia group say the action caused £4k of damage and the CPS decide it’ll take two weeks to decide how best to punish those involved. Awesome use of public money and court time.

But then that is at the heart of what the protest was about. The extent to which our whole society revolves around large corporations and their interests, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Corporate profits must be propped up with bailouts and tax loopholes however badly they screw up and however many ordinary people must suffer.

Because despite the fact massive corporations have only really come to dominate our society over the last 150 years, no one seems now able to imagine a world without them. We should let them fail and move on, to a world centred around real people not fictional entities.

Not that we should see this as a new phenomenon. Plenty of previous civilizations suffered from similar psychological problems in their twilight years, though the “gods” they sacrificed to tended to be more traditional in nature.

This trial is certainly going to be entertaining. Even the big man has taken note – Green gave us a mention in yesterday’s Telegraph.

You’ll be able to follow all the court proceedings here. The blog will be updated daily with reflections, rants, debate and the best bits of cross-examination and witness testimony.

Caroline Lucas and Richard Murphy will be giving evidence, plus a few secret witnesses.